Outrun Stories #26

Hiding in the night, that’s all I’ve got now. I didn’t ask to be turned into one of these things. Sure, fucking sure, it always seemed to me that it would be pretty cool, the reality? Very different.

Three years I’ve been this way. One minute you’re at a party, the usual, drink, drugs, boys, girls, loud music, quiet signals between faces and eyes as the lights flash and flicker and you’re thinking you’re some sort of god damned hero.

This guy glides over to me, literally looks like he’s fucking gliding—shit, I guess I know now that he was—but I just thought I was wasted or something back then. Anyway, he’s all cute smile and funny stories and interesting lines, here snort a bit of this, dab a bit of this, hell, not the sort your mother taught you to trust, but it’s a party, right? And that night I was going to have some fucking fun no matter what.

He must have seen it, in the back of my eyes, asking for it, for someone or something to take me away from all the bullshit that had gathered up in my life, but… fuck, if he’d just told me a hint of the truth I’d have backed out of there, I’d have run a fucking mile.

Eight days we went on for, Jesus, sleep an hour here, an hour there, harder and deeper into this pit, how the hell did he stay looking so normal, I was burnt out beyond belief, but he just seemed to keep it all together. My nerves were fried, mind turned into mush, guts turned inside out. We’d floated through the city at night for eight days, tearing it up, sunglasses on, sailing through the neon lights, gliding on the illuminous hue of this big party town.

Then he hits me with it, just as I’m at the end of my tether, it’s not fun anymore, it’s got to stop, I’m falling apart, in more ways than one, let me sleep, give me a day, two days, just need to eat and sleep and put a bit of me back together and he just stands there and he’s like: what if I could take all the pain away?

And I’m laughing and saying to him, shit, if you can take just a quarter of this away, I’ll do it. What you got? What the hell you got that’s going to help me now? And he says, no, not just that type of pain, all pain, everything, forever? Fuck, I thought he was going to put a bullet through my brain right there and then, but no, he launches at me, chews down good and hard on my neck, gulps up my blood, what was left of it. I guess he liked the toxic sort…

Now it’s been three years, and yeah, the pains gone, but so has the fun. Can’t have one without the other, they, well, us types, we have to come up with our own imaginative ways to find some fun. It’s why he did what he did, but I refuse to go down that road. So now I hide, here in the night.